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THE LIMITS OF DESCRIPTION
I. DEFINITION: THE LIMITS OF DESCRIPTION 182. The word description has several meanings equally approved by the dictionary ; but of these only one defines description as a distinct kind of composition. The description of the steam-engine in a text-book of physics, the description of a plot of land in a mortgage deed, these are obviously what we have called exposition. But Mr. Kipling's description of Engine . 007, and any novelist's description of a house and grounds, these are obviously what we currently mean by description when we use the word distinctively. The distinctive mark or note, then, of description is the attempt to suggest how the thing strikes the eye or ear. There is no such attempt in the text-book of physics or the mortgage deed. The one details how the engine works, the other exactly where the land lies. Mr. Kipling's phrase of a locomotive, that it "took the eighty-foot bridge without the guard rail like a hunted cat on the top of a, fence, " would be as far out of place in the one as, in the other, Stevenson's "thin distant spires of pine along the edge of the hill. " But these two phrases are essentially descriptive. They reveal the writer stirring the memories of familiar sights in order to suggest a new image. How closely the reader's image corresponds to the writer's depends upon the store in the mind of the one and the descriptive skill of the other. Perhaps it never corresponds exactly, if it be a new image, not the awakened memory of an old one ; it often corresponds in all main points; it may always correspond far enough for the writer's purpose of suggestion. In any case, the attempt, the aim, is the same. Description, then, is that kind of writing which, by appeal to memories of sight or sound or odour, suggest new imaginings. 183. If the image be of an action, why have we not narration ? The answer must be uncertain, for between the two kinds there is no boundary. Typically, description suggests action only as a means ; narration, as its proper end. Defoe describes Crusoe's hut by telling how Crusoe built it. The means here is the suggestion of actions ; but the end is the suggestion of the hut, the look of it. In narration, action is an end in itself. We must see things happen and each happening lead to another. The difference may be summed up by saying that the description of Crusoe's hut has no plot. The actions have no meaning except a purely descriptive meaning. Steme's Sentimental Journey is thus seen to be description rather than narration. It is full of action without plot, of action whose only significance is descriptive. But to say of whole pieces that this one is description, that one narration, leads finally to bewilderment; for many are as much one as the other, or now one, now the other. And, what is more, the descriptive aim is not often pursued singly ; usually description is for purposes of narration. The main exception is books of travel, which are usually more descriptive than narrative. Beyond the few books of travel which have a place in literature, pieces of the length of theSentimental Journey — and that has no great length — whose aim is description for itself, are so rare in English literature as hardly to demand modification of the general statement that description is incidental to narrative. Practically, that is, description is the setting of the story. In the days before scenepainting and stage machinery it was also the staging of the play, as appears in the abundant description of the Elizabethan dramatists. Being thus commonly incidental, subordinate, description is commonly both brief and fragmentary. Though it has an aim of its own, it has usually no form of its own ; for it is merged in the forms of narration. It is brief and fragmentary in order that the movement of the story may not be interrupted (§§ 15o, 168, 172). Long descriptions, and in general any solid block of description in a story, — for very few even of what seem long descriptions have any great absolute length, — are tacitly resented by most readers, and usually skimmed, if not skipped. Being usually subordinate, description should usually be brief. Realized, indeed, the scene must be always ; but it must be emphasized only so far as is demanded by the action or the character, must never be emphasized for itself. Description, then, is at once distinguishable from narration, and usually subordinate to it. It is much more easily distinguishable from the other arts. Indeed, the difference would hardly seem worth making, if we did not hear still that phrase word-painting. This figure of speech arises from a confusion of ideas. Painting represents a landscape or a face ; description suggests one. The methods and the results of the one have no essential likeness to the methods and the results of the other. Representing a visual image by line and colour in a fixed combination seen at one glance is not like suggesting a visual image by words following one after another. All that the two have in common is the essential principle of all art, whatever its kind, the principle of selection (§ 147). Moreover, visual images are only part of the suggestions employed by description. Perhaps they should be only a small part. Form, colour, attitude, indeed are matter of description, as they are matter of painting; but the matter of description is also motion and odour, which are impossible to painting. Above all, sound, which is equally impossible to painting, is the very mainstay of description, its most fertile field of suggestion, what may be called its proper domain. Instead of wasting effort in the attempt to rival the representation of form, colour, and attitude by the mere suggestion of these, description properly regards these as only a small part of its material, seeks also from motion and odour to achieve by range of suggestion what it cannot achieve by visual distinctness of suggestion, and above all relies on suggestions of sound. Category: Description